Technology innovation has potential to change the education landscape...

I remember when I began my job at Utah State University in 1992, we had just purchased a WICAT Learning System that required the purchase of a $15,000 ten megabyte hard drive. It was a box about 2 feet tall, 1 foot wide, and 2 feet deep. "10 Megabytes?" people asked. "How are you ever going to fill up a 10 megabyte hard drive?" That memory makes me smile, for I now carry 64 Gigabytes of storage in my pocket - in a 2 inch by 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch flash drive. That's over 65,000 times more storage - and the price? About $35 U.S. What a difference a couple decades make.

As I help train our pre-service teachers in the college of education, I often tell them that technology is moving so quickly they'll be using tools we haven't even imagined yet. I'd like to share some of those new technologies just being introduced today that have potential to impact education.

Our display screens will change dramatically

Over the years we've watched the CRT displays disappear - replaced by LCD and LED screens that are now up to 100 inches diagonally. But another technology - OLED (organic light emitting diodes) will be replacing those. The advantage of OLED is that the display can be incredibly thin, and yet still be vibrantly beautiful. Currently there are OLED TVs available up to 77 inches. Even larger displays are coming soon.

Who needs a touch screen?

This year, a number of new hardware devices were introduced that sense what the user is doing without having to physically touch any hardware. Leap Motion will market it's device in May 2013. Leap Motion represents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. It's more accurate than a mouse, as reliable as a keyboard and more sensitive than a touchscreen. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

Elliptic labs have produced an ultrasound sensor system that can be embedded in laptops and mobile devices that allow touchless gesture control of devices.

A company, Tobii, has produced new hardware that will allow you to track locations on a display by following, or tracking, your eye movements! This has great potential for those with disabilities.

Robotic Cameramen will record your lectures

​Swivllets you record your classroom lectures and presentations so you can go back later and watch yourself looking for things to improve on or share the lectures online for students to re watch and review. Swivl works with iOS and some Android devices to automatically record video and wireless audio, while it follows you wherever you move. It also works with any tripod mountable pocket video camera like Flip or Kodak, tripod mountable webcams like the Logitech C930e, or point and shoot cameras under six ounces. It can be placed on any surface in a room, or get mounted on most standard tripods for even more placement control. This means it can accommodate even the most unusual of layouts.

Pens that record what you write, and what you hear at the same time.

Sky wifi Smartpen: ​Record everything you write and hear. Tap anywhere on your notes to replay the audio from that moment in time. Automatically, your recorded notes and audio are wirelessly sent and securely stored in your Evernote® account. Your exclusive Livescribe plan for Evernote includes 500MB of additional upload capacity for smartpen notes and audio. Using Evernote, quickly search and share your lectures, meetings and ideas any time on nearly any device. Simply tap on your notes in Evernote and interactive versions of your pencasts play back within Livescribe Player.

IRISNotes:This hardware pen types, what you write on paper and transfers that text to your computer or mobile device. This could be a helpful tool for both a teacher and the students.

Pico Projectors - projectors that are smaller than your fingertip!

You'll be seeing LED and Laser-based projectors in more products in the near future. Microvision's ShowWX+ is one example of an iPhone sized laser projector. As each year brings new advancements in this technology, you'll be seeing ever brighter projectors built into cameras, smart phones, laptops, and tablets.

Interacting with Projected Images

Interactive whiteboards have been a staple in classrooms for several years now. However, that is changing. Projectors are now being produced that have the same interactivity built right into the projector itself. ​eBeam by Luidia is a pocket-sized piece of hardware that can turn any surface into an interactive whiteboard. Ubi Interactive just released another product that turns any surface into a touch screen.

Microsoft Surface Studio

You aren't creating with technology. Technology is allowing you to create and design the way you've always dreamed of. The Microsoft Surface Studio's 28-inch display can sit like a regular monitor or be folded down into "studio mode" for drawing and writing. The Microsoft Surface pro comes with a Surface pen and the new Surface dial that can be placed on the screen and rotated to change colors, settings, and more. ​

Terabyte Flash Drive? Yes!

Source: C|NET News - "Want to back up your entire computer and more on a single flash drive? You'll be able to do that courtesy of the latest gadget from Kingston. The DataTraveler HyperX Predator 3.0 USB flash drive is currently shipping with 512 gigabytes of storage. But the next generation due out this quarter will ramp up the capacity to a full terabyte, making it the largest USB drive available on the market.

Kingston is also touting the drive as fast. With SuperSpeed USB 3.0 support, the HyperX Predator offers transfer speeds of up to 240MB per second when reading data and up to 160MB per second when writing data. And with a zinc alloy metal casing, the drive is made to be durable as well. It also comes with a five-year warranty."

New Ways to Input Information

Celluon has created a device that projects a laser keyboard on any flat, opaque surface that is able to sense where your fingers are. Now your keyboard can be contained in a small box that can be easily transported with your portable device.

Voice recognition is also becoming very accurate. The Google Chrome browser (free) allows you to speak your search into a device's microphone. Siri and similar features on other platforms are becoming more popular. The new Google Glass responds to voice commands.

Personal Assistants that listen to you.

​Amazon Echo is designed around your voice. It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more. Echo begins working as soon as it detects the wake word. You can pick Alexa or Amazon as your wake word. Echo is also an expertly tuned speaker that can fill any room with immersive sound. Echo's brain is in the cloud, running on Amazon Web Services so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time. The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.

Google Home, released November 4, 2016, is very similar to Amazon Echo. "Google Home is a voice-activated speaker powered by the Google Assistant." Ask it questions or tell it to do things. Google home will play music, podcasts, or radio from services like Google Play Music, Spotify, YouTube, and Pandora. It will also keep you up to date with news, weather, sports, traffic, local businesses, and more. It’s your own Google, always ready to help. Just say, "OK Google" to activate your Google Home.

​​There are also other Robot Assistants likeJibo and Tapia that are more like a friend or family member than a computer.

Now, We Wear Our Computers

CES 2014 showcased many new and upcoming technologies. One theme that ran through much of them was technology that we could wear. For those of us old enough to remember the Dick Tracy cartoons in the mid-1900s may recall his two-way wrist TV. He could talk to his force wirelessly! We're reaching a time where that may no longer be fiction. Smart watches that connect you to the internet, glasses that do the same, running shoes that track your heartrate, distance, and speed, and more are coming out soon.

An Earpiece Translator

​This earpiece will translate any conversation between you and another person while you are speaking.

"Using the latest technologies in speech recognition, machine translation and the advances of wearable technology, this smart earpiece allows wearers to speak different languages but still clearly understand each other. Simply put, when one person speaks, the other hears it in their language." (source)

Printing in 3D

Here's a technology that will certainly make it into the classroom. I have seen prices come down drastically over the past few years. Students will have the opportunity to print actual three dimensional objects with movable parts...

So what will the future look like? Here's one vision...

The following videos show one company's vision of the near future - Corning Glass. I think you'll find these interesting to watch.